Two weeks after defending a confidentiality policy as standard, Purdue Global says it won't require faculty to sign agreement before they teach

Betty Vandenbosch, chancellor of Purdue Global, shows off shirts and hats from the new online arm of Purdue University, which launched Monday, April 2. Purdue Global is the rebranded Kaplan University, a former for-profit online university now operated by Purdue.(Photo11: Mark Simons/Purdue University)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Two weeks a national group of professors called out Purdue Global over questions of academic freedom, the online university announced that it would scrap the four-page confidentiality agreements faculty at the former Kaplan University are required to sign before they may teach.

In a Sept. 5 letter to nearly 2,000 Purdue Global faculty, Chancellor Betty Vandenbosch said the “confidentiality and restriction agreement” – uncovered and shared with Purdue faculty and higher education media outlets in late-August by the American Association of University Professors – was being eliminated immediately.

“Well before the media reports, we began a careful examination of the confidentiality agreement and have concluded it is no longer necessary,” Vandenbosch wrote. “Effective immediately, the practice of requiring a standalone agreement on these matters will be discontinued at Purdue Global. There has never been a case where the agreement had to be enforced, so its removal shouldn’t affect you in any way.”

Previously, Vandenbosch had told the J&C that the nondisclosure agreement was “just not a big deal” and was a holdover from Kaplan University, the online giant Purdue University purchased for a $1 from Kaplan Higher Education and rebranded at Purdue Global, a nonprofit arm of Purdue University. The deal, first announced in April 2017, was finalized in March 2018 and has been a source of contention – particularly among some on the Purdue faculty and skeptics of for-profit universities – from the start.

The American Association of University Professors took issue with the confidentiality agreement, saying it threatened to stifle the academic freedom and rights faculty at Purdue and other universities typically take for granted. The agreement covered Purdue Global ownership of materials faculty develop and says faculty members promise not to speak out against Purdue once leaving the program.

At time, Greg Scholtz, director of the association’s department of academic freedom, tenure and governance for the American Association of University Professors, said: “I’ve never seen anything like it,” calling it “breathtakingly inappropriate in higher education.” A headline in one higher education publication labeled it a "gag order."

Vandenbosch told the J&C that the document was a “normal practice” to protect what online universities call “learning management systems.”

Reports later in Inside Higher Education and The Chronicle of Higher Education, two leading outlets covering higher education, showed that two giants in online courses – the University of Southern New Hampshire and Arizona State University – didn’t have similar confidentiality clauses for their faculty.

But Vandendbosch said the document, like nearly everything else in the Purdue-Kaplan deal, was being reviewed to determine how well they lined up with Purdue’s practices.

Robert Winters, who was president of the Kaplan Faculty Senate for four years and teaches courses in public safety, told the J&C he thought questions about the document were overblown and that he never felt his freedom to teach the way he wanted was compromised. He said he didn’t hear complaints about it, either, during his time on the Kaplan Faculty Senate.

Steve Beaudoin, a chemical engineering professor and co-chairman of a Purdue Senate committee working through questions about the Purdue-Kaplan deal, said his committee received a copy of the agreement over the summer. Beaudoin said the terms were unlike anything faculty at Purdue would be asked to sign.

But he said Purdue and Purdue Global officials had already agreed to review it, as well as other policies, with the University Senate before reports about the confidentiality agreement hit the media.

Beaudoin said that in the past weeks, Vandenbosch and Frank Dooley, a vice provost who has been leading the university’s work on sewing Kaplan into the fabric of Purdue, met with his committee.

“Right away, Betty told us, ‘We’re going to scrap it,’” Beaudoin said. “The word she used was ‘silly.’ … She said why try to fix it when we should just get rid of it.”

Dooley agreed.

“Everyone from the University Senate leadership to the West Lafayette administrative team to our colleagues at Purdue Global are united in the feeling that the document is unnecessary and should be discontinued in the interest of aligning with Purdue’s policies and culture,” Dooley said in an emailed statement.

A statement issued by the national and Indiana arms of the AAUP applauded the move, saying it was a victory for “shared governance and higher education for the common good,” while remaining critical about Purdue Global. The group called on Purdue Global to rescind any other nondisclosure agreements with faculty.

“Beyond this, many concerns about their practices remain, including an overreliance on contingent labor, lack of shared governance procedures and overall lack of protections for academic freedom,” the AAUP statement read. “Today is a step in the right direction, and we hope that Purdue Global will continue to make more positive changes in response to the concerns that we and others have raised as it transitions from a for-profit institution to one that benefits the public.”

In her letter, Vandenbosch said Purdue Global would still need to maintain ways to protect the online university’s trade secrets.

“While we are continuing to evaluate our policies – and some may change to reflect our broader efforts to align with Purdue University – the essence of our collaborative spirit and mutual respect for each other endures,” Vandenbosch wrote. “We will continue to recognize and preserve your ability to copyright, own and distribute your scholarly works and any personal instructional works that you create and offer individually to supplement Purdue Global’s online curriculum delivery, while also safeguarding trade secret and other confidential information owned by the university or entrusted to us to protect.”

In recent weeks, Purdue Global also has taken heat for its student “Policy Guide” that, among other things, would keep students from suing the online school and force them to agree to arbitrate all “disputes, controversies and claims.” The AAUP called on Purdue Global to end what it called “another shameful practice.”

Vandenbosch’s letter to Purdue Global faculty did not address the policy. But Beaudoin said the University Senate committee has been working to compare the rights of Purdue and Purdue Global students to determine how they might need to line up better.

“What we’re going to find, I believe, is that they are similar,” Beaudoin said. “We still have a lot to sort out on Global.”

FOR MORE: To read the four-page “confidentiality and restriction agreement” Purdue Global previously had faculty sign, go to jconline.com and click on the link to this story.

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.